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Confirmed Arsenal team for Sydney FC with Lacazette on bench

Arsenal fans looking forward to their first sight of the new striker signing Alexandre Lacazette playing for the Gunners will have to be patient for a little longer, after Arsene Wenger released the Arsenal team sheet for the first game of our pre-season schedule today against Sydney FC in Australia.

The former Lyon star is set to make his Arsenal debut today but he will do so from the bench, with Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck in the starting line-up instead. Mesut Ozil has spoken about how much he is looking forward to playing with Lacazette and he will also start today, with Per Mertesacker, Francis Coquelin and Petr Cech the other first team regulars.

Arsenal’s other summer signing Sead Kolasinac also gets his first Arsenal game today and will be on from the start, with young Gunners Willock, Nelson, Bielik and Bramall completing the XI.

Wow, I am really so impressed with this young lads playing in the first half of the match…. I mean look at the confidence of Bramall Nelson and Willock and like one of the commentators said, they just fit in perfectly into the system and they were not show boating in anyways, they were just playing to there ability and i must say i am impressed so far with what i am seeing especially Bramall, i can see why Arsene has left Gibbs out of the team… this kid deserves a chance..

Ox and is agent should be worried. He is not sanchez and may be he would never be. But the kid Nelson could kick ox out of the team so he should be very careful on tryig to hold the club hostage. A club that has supported him with all the consistency poor performances and injuries.

well true in this game but generally walcott is a superb finisher and easily one of our best finishers in the team, one can say anything about walcott but he is highly efficient, like the contrary to ox, walcott is a player who lives on his superb end product (goals + assists) and i do like that

dude you know thats not right walcott came when he was very young and didnt score much when he was young look up the stats in the last five years and i am sure thats great + TONS of assists, what do you want a destroyer? pretty passing? watching ox is great but ox has no end product but walcott is highly efficient, we have enough pretty passers i want some who can just score and assist and walcott does that pretty well, from bench and when he starts

No honest Arsenal fan will say Giroud or Walcott are both great finishers.Being a better finisher than Walcott is not even an achievement.Walcott might be poor on the ball but he’s definitely a better finisher than Giroud.Have we suddenly forgotten all the sitters he used to miss?I think we should be fair when criticizing our players.

First of all great performance by bramall and nelson!
now to the topic: its proven again and again welbeck is a joke of a striker he hasn’t that drive for goals.. a superb athlete but never ever a striker.. and i wrote this before the penalty, i dont think that because of a penalty miss

if i were özil i would be annoyed from welbeck too.. giroud doesnt have the speed of welbeck but he has much better movement especially at the near post and much better finishing, welbeck should be sold before we even think about selling walcott or giroud

Ozil has been let down by our so called strikers, i wish Wenger plays Lacazette and stop depending on welbeck, Theo . Giroud can be back up is fine but those two can missed clear goal where you do not expect them to miss . Poor Ozil may be this time creation can be converted to assist goals.

lol you measure walcott on 60 minutes on the first game in the preseason? and welbeck is everton standard? and walcott not? dont joke with me walcott is three times the player welbeck is, welbeck can run and thats it while walcott is highly efficient and can score AT LEAST 15-20 goals + 10 assists from the WING! those are great numbers

yeah but one thing favors walcott even more as he played more games than welbeck and in the beginning of his career didnt score much if we look the stats of the last 5 season or something walcott will probably have something like 1 in 3 (which is great) + TONS of assists

@krish there are times wallcot impresses hence the stats you gave up there, but I’m saying after that long time at arsenal shouldn’t he have perfected his game and start being consistent? If we are going to be celebrating him I think he should stop playing like he’s a 17year old that still needs fine tuning to his game

why should he be perfect if he was long with us?, why does it even matter if he was 10 years with us? if he came last year and had those stats wouldnt you have liked to keep him? he is a good first-team and sometimes squad player to utilize and he delivers, he is clinical, why do we want to sell him? he wins some games for us and scores against the big teams, when he doesnt perform just let iwobi play, but why do you guys talk as if he performed so bad last season? overall he was easily one of the players who performed the best last season, sell the ones who dont deliver or arent needed welbeck, perez campbell.etc.

I think the criticism is a bit unfair.I want the same chances given to Welbeck as those Walcott and Giroud had before calling him average.They both failed and failed again yet we kept faith in them and kept playing the for quite a while.It will be unfair to not allow Welbeck the same chances.Every one deserves his chance.The truth is that Lacazette is the only clinical CF in Arsenal.I’ll be vindicated come the end of next season.

@big g.
Do you live near Cheltenham?
Agree walcott cr*p. Lacazette goal he hangs off and runs in at pace and scores. Walcott would have been stood static in the box. Guy hasn’t got clue abd should have learned by now

Wellbeck and Walcott not good finishers both miss a lot of chances, If walcott last season would have taken more of his easier chances last season he would have been up there with Sanchez goals wise, I think Perez is better than both of them, Looks like we got some young talent though.

First game of the pre season…first game..and some of you are already having a go at the lads. What is it with modern football fans? They want the perfect 101 performance every game, there can be no misses, no wayward passes, everyone should be at peak performance etc.

Ridiculous. Perhaps some of you should go support a different team that is perfect at all things all the time? Good luck finding it.

FIVE THINGS LACAZZETTE COULD BRING TO ARSENAL.
Arsenal finished in the fifth position last season, their lowest league finish since Arsene Wenger took over as manager of the club two decades ago and that anomaly has prompted the Frenchman to delve into the transfer market and splash the cash, something the fans had hitherto accused him of not doing enough.

He has already boosted his squad with the addition of Bosnian defender, Sead Kolasinac and French striker Alexandre Lacazette, but he knows that just acquiring both players will not satiate the appetite of the fans and he is already on the hunt for another Frenchman, in the person of Monaco Winger Thomas Lemar. While teammates Kylian Mbappe, Bernardo Silva and Tiemoue Bakayoko may have garnered more headlines, Lemar has apparently impressed Arsene Wenger with his playmaking ability and versatility in midfield and I will give you five things the 21-year-old France International will bring to the Emirates.

He would be a perfect fit at Arsenal
There are reports making the rounds that one of Arsenal’s best midfielders, Santi Carzola will be out for the whole of next season and from an Arsenal point of view, Lemar could perhaps best be described as some sort of direct replacement for the Spaniard. He is slightly taller than the Spaniard and as equally proficient at starting attacks from deep inside his own half as he is at delivering the last defense-splitting pass in the final third. In Wenger’s traditional 4-2-3-1 formation, Lemar could either take over Cazorla’s role as the deeper-lying playmaker with a licence to roam forward or play on the left wing, but if Wenger decides to stick with the formation he finished last season with, three at the back, Lemar might struggle to displace Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez as one of the two attacking midfielders, however, that might change if one or both players leave the club.

He’s the ‘Steal’
Thomas Lemar was snapped up for just £3.5 million from Caen in 2015 with just one goal in 32 appearances for the lowly Ligue 1 side and has proven to be a fantastic investment for Monaco, who have built their recent success on getting young talents on the cheap and guiding them as they blossom into world beaters (something that used to be Arsene Wenger’s forte). He is currently valued at around £45m by Monaco, who are trying to take advantage of Arsenal’s desperation and get the most they can for him, however, even at that prize, he is still going to be a bargain buy if you put into consideration his age and the current inflation in the transfer market. There is also the potential he possesses and if he fulfills it then it will definitely be a ‘steal’ for Arsenal.

Versatility
Another thing about this young Frenchman is his versatility which will come in handy for Arsenal. He can play either as a central midfielder or on the wing and Arsene Wenger greatly values a player that can be used in a variety of positions. He was excellent on the left wing in Monaco’s 4-4-2 formation, drifting into the centre at any given opportunity. He isn’t the fastest player on the pitch but possesses an array of skills and amazing footwork which he uses in creating space for himself. He also thinks quickly on his feet and uses that quick decision-making to pick out the right pass for teammates.

He scores and creates chances
One thing that has been the hallmark of Arsene Wenger’s career as a manager of Arsenal is his ability to always have midfielders who can both create and score goals in his squad and he will be getting another of such in Lemar, who has proven he’s adept at both. He found the net 14 times in all competitions for Monaco last season and led the French league with 10 assists while setting up another four goals in Monaco’s impressive Champions League campaign. He averaged 2.2 key passes per game in the league, the fourth highest among all players, using his magical left foot to create chances for teammates from all over the pitch.

He loves to terrorise Tottenham
If there is something Arsenal fans love almost as much as seeing their club succeed, it is seeing the most hated rival, Tottenham Hotspur fail and that is something that Lemar has already done with his Monaco team, as they made sure the spurs didn’t qualify from their UCL group last season. To make it better, he scored the winning goal against Tottenham, TWICE. He scored Monaco’s second goal in both 2-1 victories over Spurs in last season’s Champions’ League group meetings and it was made sweeter that his winning goal in November that knocked Tottenham out of the competition. Those goals have already endeared him to the Arsenal fans and if he joins the club this summer and continues performing well against Spurs, he would be a fan favourite faster than how Arsenal’s campaign have ended in the UCL in recent seasons.
Do you think that there is any other thing he can bring?

Can you people lay off Welbz, and Theo for a second? Sure, both are not someones I would call clinical finishers, but it’s the first pre-season game after a 2 month layoff. The guys are just a little rusty, is all. Give them a chance. Theo is not a striker, we’ve already established that. He’s decent when he plays on the right wing, and had some stellar performances last season. Welbeck – another one who pushes and plays hard, but just doesn’t have that cutting edge sometimes. Not a bad option to have on the bench though, no?